Reports have emerged that emails sent to Outlook from any @tutanota.com address are being inaccurately flagged as spam. This ongoing issue, which has prevailed since mid-November, has led Tutanota’s team to consult multiple sources within Microsoft, including a member of the board in Microsoft Germany and Microsoft’s support team. Regrettably, the problem remains unresolved and is yet another example of how Big Tech companies’ actions are crushing competitors.
Matthias Pfau, Tuta’s CEO and co-founder, details the numerous attempts at rectification with Microsoft that have thus far only yielded standard responses, stating, “We repeatedly tried to solve the issue with Microsoft, but unfortunately the Microsoft support team has only replied with standard emails. The issue has not been solved to date so we contacted a board member of Microsoft Germany on 27 November, but have not heard back to date.” He adds that a similar incident occurred last year involving Tutanota accounts’ inability to register for Microsoft Teams, a situation that eventually found a resolution through the spotlight of public attention.
The onset of the issue was marked by user reports to Tuta’s technical support, revealing the spam flagging issues they faced while mailing Outlook users from tutanota.com accounts. The seemingly arbitrary spam filter application by Microsoft appears to target solely the tutanota.com domain, leaving Tuta’s other email domains – tuta.com, tuta.io, tutanota.de, tutamail.com, and keemail.me – unaffected for now.
Unresolved as of December 5th, 2023, the issue continues to strain Tutanota’s reputation and business operations and inconvenience its clientele. According to Pfau, businesses using Tuta that engage with Outlook users are particularly disadvantaged as their emails may be wrongfully flagged as junk mail. In light of this, Pfau calls for Big Tech to take responsibility, asserting that they must be held accountable for consequential errors and work towards upholding an impartial and open internet domain. He specifically references the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), which casts Microsoft as one of the tech giants bearing the title of “gatekeepers.”
It’s a blessing in disguise.
Yes we should blame Microsoft but pushing MS to surveil more of us in more situations is the wrong move. The right move is for senders to tell MS recipients to get an account that works if they want to receive messages from you, like Tutanota. If you need to reach an org or gov office, then snail mail is the right move. Why? Because even when your email makes it through to an MS recipient it’s subject to surveillance capitalism that you contribute to against your own interests. So fixing it is the wrong answer anyway. I would actually applaud #Tutanota if they would refuse to connect to MS servers. And they should, because ATM senders get no signal that their message did not get properly delivered.
I quit emailing Microsoft and Google’s surveillance systems a decade ago. MS & Google broke email in the 2000s by obtusely refusing msgs from residential IPs, which bullies everyone into relaying their mail (read: subjecting themselves to extra surveillance). Snail mail is more reliable.
The irony of a tor-hostile #reclaimthenet .org link also needs a spotlight. We certainly do not want a #Cloudflare site talking about “reclaiming” the net. WTF. It’s Cloudflare who we need to reclaim the net from. I would not have linked them at all. The mirrored text is good enough. Certainly if the link is needed it should be prefixed with web.archive.org/web/$URL
update
Microsoft has reversed their spam false positive on Tuta msgs logic, apparently only after public embarrassment manifested. So Tuta users can go back to being part of Microsoft’s surveillance systems. Tuta should really warn users about that when they are about to email an MS recipient.
WTF first time seeing reclaimthenet on cloudflare
Yes, but you have to remember also that only the @tutanota.com domain was affected. Other domains of tuta were not affected.
So… I don’t know how much influence is ruining one domain of tuta is going to affect the reduction of capitalism and its orders.
I felt so bad when my managers did not receive my mails, because of an issue on outlooks part, and now I’m thinking of buying the paid versions of tuta in case that again happens in the future.
I’m determined to use mail services that are not Microsoft for the aforementioned reasons that you had highlighted - but why should I be the one running my wheels and chasing after ms, in shame and misery, just to let them know their f#### mail server blocked my messages from reaching my managers directly.
And that actually caused me trouble just recently with my managers due to miscommunication. About 2 weeks ago. (They did find it in spam/ junk folder, but alas… It was sort of over the water at that point).